Building Rapport in Sales and Just About Anyone

Building rapport might sound like a construction project, but it’s actually an essential human — and sales — skill. Making a connection other than the business value is much needed in long lasting partnership.

When two people connect, they have a choice. They can stare awkwardly at each other without interaction, or they can start a conversation to get to know each other.

One of my guiding principles is that every business is a people business. It doesn’t matter what your industry is or what you do — if you are not relating to the people you deal with, talk to, manage, or lead, your career will be a long, hard slog.

That’s why building rapport is essential, especially when you’re building a relationship and selling over the phone (telemarketing). Without face-to-face contact, it’s a little bit difficult to have a human connection with your business prospect.

To establish a good relationship with your business prospect depends on your personality and how you communicate with business people, but no matter who you are there are a few commonalities in the rapport-building process.

The golden rule of rapport is to always behave like a human being and most of salespeople have forgotten this for some reason. It’s the first step to building confidence and trust, and sets the stage that you’re not going be running the typical sales conversation with pushy salespeople and browbeaten prospects. And this has real effects on sales. The purpose of rapport is to get a mental picture of who you’re talking to, so you can tee up information in a way your prospect will like and relate to.

In any business talk, building rapport is very essential if you want more than just a contract from your prospect. It is very needed to see how emotional value impacts the business communication and how it can be used by many of our salespeople out there.